Heart Rate Variability And Its Associations With Affective Valence During Exercise

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is considered measure of parasympathetic activity and has been purported to be a measure of readiness and resilience against stress. The importance of exercise for health cannot be understated but it is itself a stressor and may be a reason why so many avoid this healthy behavior. Prevalence of exercise behavior has continued to decline despite the numerous established benefits to health and well-being. Better understanding is needed of the relationship between exercise and physiological measures of stress and stress resilience. PURPOSE: Investigate the relationship between HRV and affective valence during exercise. METHODS: Healthy young adults (N = 25, 13 females, 23.3 ± 4.0 yrs) completed 2 20-min exercise intervals (5-blocks of 3-min exercise to 1-min rest) at high (HIT) and moderate-intensity (MIT) where affective valence (FS) was measured during the first and last 15 seconds of each interval. An average FS was calculated for each condition. Prior to each exercise session, participants sat quietly for a 5-minute HRV recording. Kubios v3.5.0 was used to analyze the HRV measures. Spearman’s rho correlation was used to examine associations between HRV (specifically the RMSSD metric) and FS at each time point. RESULTS: There was a positive correlation between HRV and FS for both the MIT and HIT conditions (r = 0.28, r = 0.31, respectively), meaning greater HRV was associated with more positive affect during the exercise bouts. CONCLUSION: Greater HRV, thought to reflect improved stress regulation and readiness, is associated with a more positive affective valence during exercise. As regular exercise behavior can lead to greater HRV, these results further support the stress-regulatory benefit of exercise.